Could Electroshock Therapy Help Erase Painful Memories?

A recent study shows that electroshock therapy may help some erase painful memories from the past. 

Researchers learned to condition rats in order to fear a specific sound. The first day after the beginning of the experiment, the creatures were confronted with the same sound but received an electroconvulsive shock to the head immediately afterwards. 

After the rodents were shocked, they were no longer afraid of the sound and forgot about the condition altogether, according to National Geographic. 

"For decades people had thought that once a memory is wired in the brain it stays there forever," Karim Nader, a neuroscientist at McGill University, said, via the news organization. 

Previous studies had shown mixed results from the 1960s trial--and so it was abandoned. 

"Part of the field believed it, but the other part of the field just didn't believe it," Nader said. "And the ones who didn't believe it were the dominant ones."

Researchers found that around 40 "severely-depressed" patients who were being treated with ECT--a type of therapy that's only used for mental and emotional disorders--has been associated with memory loss in the past. Participants were asked to watch a morbid slideshow involving death and molestation. Each were all told they would be having their memories tested and asked to "pay close attention" to the stories, according to Medical Daily. 

"A week later, all were shown a partially covered version of its first slide and asked to recall just one of the stories. Then the patients were divided into three groups- two groups were given ECT immediately after recall and testing - one group was quizzed on both stories immediately after waking from the anesthesia used for the procedure while the other was tested 24 hours later. The third group simply got the cue and the test, but not ECT," according to Time. 

The group that was quizzed immediately after they woke up proved to remember both stories well. The other group, that did not receive ECT, however, remembered the story they had been tested on better. 

Researchers concluded that the timing of memory played a significant role in whether the process was successful. As electric charges need time to interact with the brain's storage process, this may explain why memories could not be recalled following the treatment, but not at the 24 hour mark. 

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Nature Neuroscience.